Dave Bidini: Eight conversations about art and magic

A magical night at the Art Gallery of Ontario

I.
The first Thursday of every month, the Art Gallery of Ontario stays open late. Carpets laid, wine poured. They have these things called “pop-up talks” and I was asked to do one. I said OK, not knowing what I was walking into. The Group of Seven. Music. Bacon. Toboggans. Ray Materick. Toques and gloves. The Canadian identity. The first four subjects were fine, but the last one I’ve tried swatting away like a partridge at the knees. Before walking in, I sludged my way through the snow to the museum’s whale-ribbed façade. There, 2,000 people were standing outside waiting to be let into the gallery. The Canadian identity. Someone chanted, “We want art!” waving around a cigarette. A security guard pulled out his pack of smokes and had one, too. Nicotine evening frost; bluebreath; laughter; a little drunk. “We want art!” Walking inside, I was assaulted by the heat and an enormous black and white photograph of modern composer and filmmaker Michael Snow. Looking around, a strange magic seemed to be moving about the room.

II.
The gallery was thick with bodies. I felt like I was in a movie I couldn’t name filmed in a city I didn’t know. Music played across one court down two corridors and into the main concourse reaching a white linen stand-up bar where a handful of beautiful people were standing up.
“Jay Ferguson is spinning,” said one woman.
“Who?” said the other.
“You know, Jay Ferguson from Sloan.”
“Oh, Sloan. They played my school.”
“Ya, but they’re playing HERE tonight!”
“The band?”
“No, Jay Ferguson. He’s spinning.”
“Let’s go. I used to like those guys.”
“So you’re gonna dance
tonight?”
“F— ya, look where we are.”
“I know, right. In a gallery…”
“I know!”
More laughter, then the locking of elbows striding past an orange Norval Morriseau wall.

III.
I walked over to the Frida and Diego exhibit. I’d visited it a few days before with my family and my father, who will be 83 years old this year. My dad and I do a bunch of things together — hunting, baseball and hockey games — but one thing we don’t do much is go to art galleries. So this was a first. When I mentioned at dinner that I was doing the pop-up talk, and that the people at the AGO suggested I come in for a look around the week before, my dad said:
“I’d like to see that exhibit.”
“Really?”
“Ya, sure.”
“OK, we’ll go.”
“OK, great.”
The next day, I woke up and phoned my stepmother. Had I dreamed that my dad wanted to go to the gallery?
“No, he’s planning on going.”
“OK,” I said. “Great. Crazy.”
“I’m sure Selma Hayek had something to do with it,” she said.
This time, I viewed the exhibit on my own, but all I could think of was that I’d been there with my dad the week before. To an art gallery. More magic.

My dad and I do a bunch of things together — hunting, baseball and hockey games — but one thing we don’t do much is go to art galleries.

IV.
While standing in front of a small painting of Frida Kahlo’s guts being pulled out of her midriff from a hospital bed, I heard an elegant older woman in a dark turtleneck say, “She didn’t care what people thought of her moustache.”
“Oh, but she did,” said her equally elegant male counterpart, in a red silk shirt.
“She did?”
“Yes, she groomed it.”
“Of all the things to groom,” she replied.
“Well,” said the man, holding out his arms, “You want to look good, you have to groom.”
“But seriously, it actually doesn’t look that good,” said the woman.

V.
I walked past the giant hamburger — Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Burger — which gallery workers were in the middle of restoring. A bunch of people gathered around as two women in white coats walked about the patty, wondering what to do next. I thought of my friend Chris Cran, because, after a certain age, they tell you not to eat so many hamburgers. This is hard to do seeing as they’re so delicious.
Chris Cran is a great artist who lives in Calgary. There was once a painting at the CBC of a fellow coming home late and his wife angry in her hair rollers waving a rolling pin at him. The fellow wore a fedora and blazer, and whenever I passed the painting with friends, they pointed out how much it looked like me. It wasn’t until I got to know Chris — through his wife, actor/dancer/playwright Denise Clarke — that I realized he’d done the painting.
A few years ago, Chris almost died. True. But he didn’t and I’d like to think that whoever makes these kinds of decisions realized that a world without Chris Cran is really not much of a world. I remembered Chris telling me about what happened, which was:
“I was driving my mother-in-law to the hospital to pick up my father-in-law, who had just had a gall bladder operation. He was released and I was wheeling him down the hallway when, all of a sudden, I got a pain in my chest.”
“Did you think it was heartburn?”
“Yes, exactly. It got stronger and stronger until I thought maybe something else was going on. Then it got to the point when, really, I knew it wasn’t heartburn.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I told Denise’s parents that I had to sit down a moment, and I left them. I tried to get the attention of some hospital staff, but I found that, if you look sick in a hospital, this is impossible. I finally stopped a woman who was pushing a wheelchair. I told her what was happening and she grabbed a nurse who was passing by. The nurse listened to my story and pushed me down to emergency.”
“Whoa. Good nurse.”
“Ya. But it took a few minutes to get the attention of some doctors. One finally gave me a quick test, and discovered that I was having a heart attack. They gave me some medication to ease the pain and got me into an ambulance and rushed me to another hospital that had a state-of-the-art cardio unit.”
“Whoa.”
“Ya. A medical team put a stent into my heart and I gradually recovered.”
“So if you hadn’t been in the hospital …”
Standing around the Floor Burger, one crowd left, then another returned. The restorers continued to move around the patty. People seemed fascinated although I don’t think anyone knew what was going on.

VI.
I went to see the Evan Pennys on the fourth floor. Chris Cran is Evan’s friend, and, one Christmas, he invited me to a little show that the sculptor was having on Dupont Street near where I live. The figures in the show were small, but at the AGO, they stretch like plugs of bubblegum nearly floor-to-ceiling; the remarkably human-seeming busts (many of Penny himself) are made from silicone, which comes to life the closer you get to it. Standing maybe a dozen inches from a bust of Penny as a 70-year-old man, two young men with long hair still wearing their winter coats moved beside me, reeking of dope.
“Whoa, man.”
“I know, right?”
“I told you, dude”
“Yes, you did.”
“Man.”
“I know.”
“Insane, dude!”
“I know!!”
“The hair, dude!”
“It’s so real.”
“F—, I know!”
Then, more laughter.

VII.
Soon, it was time for my pop-up talk. I waited in front of a wall of Group of Sevens. Organizers had told me not to worry because, even if the room seems empty before the talk, it will immediately fill up at the designated time. This proved to be true. A few minutes before I was set to talk, the room filled with every kind of face and body, each of them seeming fine and beautiful filtered under the soft perfect gallery lights.
A young blond woman with braids wearing a plaid skirt and a winter cardigan kneeled to my left, looking up blue-eyed as I prepared to speak. Then Sean, who works at the gallery, told me to start. The Canadian identity. I tried to sound smart and artful and funny, and, 10 minutes later, I was done.
The room emptied, moving to their next pop-up.
I asked Sean whether what had just happened had, in fact, happened.
“That’s what a lot of people say!”
I asked if there’d been a beautiful young blond woman staring up at me from the floor while I’d delivered my smart, artful and funny address.
He laughed and gave me two drink tickets.

VIII.
I cashed in the tickets, then found myself on the fifth floor: contemporary art. There, at the far end of the gallery, stood a sculpture — La Montana Rusa (Russian Mountains) ­—by Los Carpinteros from Havana, Cuba. Using pink foam mattresses and a dark metal track with a headboard at either end, the sculpture is like a huge roller-coaster bed — actually, it is a huge rollercoaster bed — which, to me, said something about the journey of dreams and the escape of sleep and that magical place between movement and rest. Impressed by its stark pinkness and sheer size among the rest of the pieces, I moved backwards to the middle of the room in an attempt to take it all in, when, all of a sudden, the cardiganed blond moved in front of me. Holding a bag close to her hip with one hand, she grabbed a photo using her iPhone with the other, then stood there. While I am a kept man happy in my stead, I imagined our conversation, which is the kind of thing one does is an art gallery.
“This is pretty cool, huh?” I said.
“Ya, I like it.”
“Have you seen the Evan Pennys?”
“No, I haven’t. Not yet.”
“Oh, they’re great.”
“So you’ve seen them?”
“Yes. But I’ll see them again. I know the artist. Well, I know his friend.”
“Wow, cool. Should we go see them together?”
“Yes, let’s.”
“OK, great.”
“Did you like my talk?”
“I did, yes, very much. Especially, the part about The Canadian identity.”
“It was magical.”